Sean Mac Bride & Fr. Sean Mc Manus in New York in the spring of 1976, eight years before the announcement of the Mac Bride Principles.

Malign influence of Powell alive and well

Posted By: April 25, 2018

Brian Feeney in the article below reminds us all about Enoch Powell (1912-1998)— the nasty old racist, anti-Irish, and anti-Catholic politician who “parachuted” into Northern Ireland to get re-elected when the English finally rejected his racism.It was later revealed that Fr. Mc Manus, while he was still in England, had also been in Powell’s crosshairs. Click on link: http://www.irishnationalcaucus.org/fr-mc-manus-enoch-powell-and-the-redemptorist-informer/

“[Enoch Powell’s] extremist views were immediately attractive to—who else?— But Ulster Unionists. In October 1974 33,000 unionists elected this man, reviled as a racist and publicly shunned by MPs of all parties in Britain, MP for South Down which he remained until defeated in 1987…Brian Feeney. Irish New. Belfast. Wednesday, April 24, 2014

It turned out that it was wonderfully appropriate to broadcast Enoch Powell’s notorious speech of April 20, 1968, on its fiftieth anniversary last week.

The broadcast and commentary surrounding the speech coincided with Theresa May’s nasty government being caught on treating post-war immigrants from the Caribbean in, to use the current home secretary’s words, an ‘appalling’ fashion. May’s behavior as home secretary from 2010 to 2016 was shown to be perfectly consistent with the attitude to immigrants displayed by British governments since the 1950s. In her case, it was more explicit.

Powell’s speech in 1968 didn’t just come out of the blue. It was in the context of a powerful populist racist campaign Powell led to blocking the entry to the UK of East African Asians with British passports. The Labour government, spooked by enormous marches and demonstrations supporting Powell, rushed through emergency legislation, the Commonwealth Immigrants Act 1968, in three days. East African Asians were being given a rough time in newly independent Kenya and Uganda. Powell and racists like him feared Asians from Kenya and Uganda would arrive in England and change the blood line of their fantasy ‘sceptered isle, this other Eden, demi-paradise,’ making it no longer purely English. What nonsense.

Immigration was an issue in the 1970 general election, and many think Labour’s perceived weakness on the issue and Powell’s campaigning lost them the election. Lost despite Labour passing that 1968 act, the most blatantly racist piece of legislation to deprive British citizens of their right to come to Britain. It led in 1973 to a case in the European Court of Human Rights, East African Asians v. the UK, in which the UK was found guilty of breaching Articles 3, 5, 8 and 14 of the European Convention. Did they care? Not a bit.

However, in contrast to the attitude and behavior of this British government, Ted Heath the Conservative leader in 1968, sacked Powell from the shadow cabinet. He spent the next six years intriguing with Labour against his own party until in 1974 he repudiated the Conservative government and campaigned fiercely against joining the EEC as it was then. He was delighted when Labour won the first 1974 election with his public support hoping Harold Wilson, the Labour prime minister, would hold a referendum advocating leaving the EEC. By that time Powell was a political pariah shunned by Conservatives as a ‘Judas’ and regarded as a dangerous maverick by Labour.

His extremist views on the purity of Britishness, his hostility to the EEC as a diminution of British sovereignty and his nostalgia for empire placed him out on a limb, a figure of evil for some. Powell was such an imperialist that he was shocked to the core by Indian independence in 1947. He had wanted to be viceroy of India (honest), and on the announcement of independence, he walked the streets of London all that night in despair.

Not to worry. His extremist views were immediately attractive to—who else?— But Ulster Unionists. In October 1974 33,000 unionists elected this man, reviled as a racist and publicly shunned by MPs of all parties in Britain, MP for South Down which he remained until defeated in 1987 by the SDLP’s Eddie McGrady.

Unionists didn’t care that Powell believed the Common Travel Area allowing Irish the same rights as British people in the UK was an absurdity. In fact, they agreed with him because after all, they were British weren’t they – until they arrived in England? Powell exercised a malign influence on the UUP insisting that devolved government with Irish influence was a diminution of British sovereignty. Integration was what he advocated, a complete dead end as a policy because no British government, even Thatcher’s, would accept it. However poor Jim Molyneaux bought it, in awe of Powell.

We know now that Powell said aloud on immigration what many senior British politicians believed then and now. We know Thatcher regularly met Powell and listened to him and that he was revered by Conservative right-wingers who listened to his views about the EU as it became. In fact, you can trace a direct line from Powell’s 1968 speech to today’s Brexiteers.

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